Hyderabad: A 38-year-old woman was critically injured and is in a coma after an iron rod from a Metro Rail construction site fell on her head while she and her husband were driving by Nampally railway station on their bike. Her husband had a close shave as the rod hit Uzma Hafeez and she fell off the bike, onto the road.
People living in the area say that the workers of L&T company constructing the metro, have taken no precautions to ensure safety of the public at the work site.
A local shopkeeper says that iron rods have fallen onto the road twice before, in the same way, but no one had fortunately been injured then.
Uzma’s head injury is serious and she is in intensive care. Her husband, Sheik Abdul Hafeez, said that he heard a sound and then saw his wife fallen on the road. “We were moving slowly since traffic was slow. Suddenly I heard a sound and my wife fell on the road. I saw blood oozing from her head and the thick iron road near her head. I realised it had fallen from the metro work site above. With the help of the locals and passers-by, I rushed my wife to the nearest hospital, where they did not provide proper treatment. And told us to take her to another hospital. We then took her to Apollo hospital at Hyderguda.”
The couple, residents of Yakutpura, were going to meet their daughter at a private college in Khairatabad. “Who wou-ld expect such a freaky accident? I am really worried about her,” said a shocked Hafeez, who is a small trader.
Doctors treating Uzma say her condition is critical. They said that the rod fell on her skull which has a deep dent and the bone particles are embedded in the brain. She has undergone brain surgery and is in a coma right now.
Ten such mishaps have taken place at metro sites in the last three years.
In November last year, a 40-year-old man was killed near Gandhi Bhavan at Nampally when a crane operating at the metro construction site crushed him. In another accident, a moving truck plunged into a large pit at the metro construction site near Malakpet killing two workers instantly. Eight other people have been injured in other mishaps at various metro sites.
L &T Metro officials are refusing to talk much about the incident and merely stated that they are investigating how the rod fell down.
